


Repurpose

by atomiccourier



Series: Atom I.C. Courier [6]
Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-21
Updated: 2016-05-21
Packaged: 2018-06-09 20:24:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6921967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atomiccourier/pseuds/atomiccourier
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Big Empty has lots of secrets. This one just might be really important.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Repurpose

The Big Empty is almost more of a home to you than Vegas, albeit smaller and more sciency, but if anything that makes it a much better getaway, which is what it has become to you. It's hard to handle Mayoral Duties 24/7 after all. The people (robots? people.) here are steadfast family, and have become a breath of fresh air to you. How fitting…

 

Oh come on, you've got to have _some_ kind of entertaining train of thought to entertain yourself while you wait for this rusty old machine to finish chugging away.

 

You’ve succeeded in fashioning together some kind of mechanical pulley system from a few construction vehicles that the workers building the tracks back in the Mojave couldn't use. Now, the grunting wheels are struggling against the thick industrial wires that suspend it between the building nearby and the newly unearthed and very suspicious entrance to a facility that you can't pinpoint on the singular surviving paper map of the facility. This is probably because parts of it have been burned away, but you're not ruling out aliens yet.

 

The door that until a few weeks ago had been buried in the earth was a very, very, thick metal, with no distinguishing marks or viable way to open it, so eventually you'd had to choose to force it open. No telling what was inside. A closet? Or a treasure trove? Or aliens? You're betting on aliens.

 

You're startled out of your train of thought by the sudden air displacement caused by the door whizzing past you, sending both itself and the now broken machine flying. Your typical grin slides into its place as you hop excitedly down into the anteroom.

The room slants downward at an almost 45° angle with a slight sideways tilt. Your Cardiac Dampening Sneaky Stealth Suit (who from here forth will be referred to as Dia) pipes up from their collar, wondering aloud what kind of monsters you’ll find. The door opposite is rigged with one of those weird huge hard-to-turn handles in the center, and the creak of it is off-puttingly loud in the metal room. Eventually you’re able to get it open, a voice in the back of your head telling you “righty: tighty, lefty: loosy.” and once again you descend.

 

The room beyond is much darker than the previous, only having light that made it through the anteroom to illuminate it. It appears to be some kind of dressing room, with benches near lockers. You crack open a few and find some impressively clean lab uniforms. Not just coats. There are also uniforms, with gloves and shoes and masks that, upon careful inspection, look to be keeping particles in, not out. There are also several vents inside the locker, which you suspect have to do with the cleanliness of the suits. You’ll have to see if you can redirect power to this place somehow.

 

The next hallway branches off in three directions. The two to either side are bunk rooms, and you spend a good about of time rifling through the personal lives of people long-dead. There isn't much from the outside, but you can read personal terminal logs once you've powered them up with your pip-boy and hacked into them. You marvel at the pranks some of these people once pulled on each other (and some they got demoted for.) Recording a few of them in your pip-boy for later will make Arcade hate you, but you do it anyway.

 

The third hallway branches off to an powered elevator door, which you can’t see the bottom of with your pip-by light. There is a ladder though, and you hop onto it and slide down. Dia ‘wheeee’s as you descend. After a few long moments you hit the roof of the car and fall flat on your ass. Nice.

 

After a good long moment to lament in your pain, you’re able to jimmy open the door on the roof of the car and hop down into the elevator proper. You lose your balance almost immediately, realizing that this is where everything stops being sideways. You won’t be able to use this elevator properly again. You squeeze in between the doors and into the next room, and everything begins to look sinister.

In the red of your light, you can see your silhouette reflected off of the walls and floors, and not much else. There isn’t dust to cover anything, and you can make out the light being reflected off of some kind of cylinders that line the walls in various sizes, as well as consoles that sit in front of and behind them. There are several doorways you can’t get open, with plaques such as “DNA Growth Lab,” “Specimen Analysis lab,” “Staff Lounge.” You eventually reach a pair of doors that swing open marked with a plaque reading “Mechanics.”

 

Inside are tables with machines in various states of repair, and terminals. You locate the most important looking one and plug in your pip-boy to give it power. After a good long few minutes of standing stock-still in the near darkness, it turns on and you’re in. You’re just about to page over to the auxiliary power, but the mission logs excite you more. You skim through. Words like ‘specimen,’ ‘fetus,’ ‘classified,’ and ‘ethics,’ race past your retinas.

 

Well, it _is_ a facility focusing its efforts on the war. You’ve gotta have _some_ way to repopulate the earth after everyone’s become radiated and there’s no DNA left untouched.

  
You turn the auxiliary power _on_.

**Author's Note:**

> I might add more chapters if I get a good reception.
> 
> I hope the art is fitting.


End file.
